DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW DIAGNOSTIC METHOD FOR THE DETECTION OF HCV ANTIBODIES: THE RAPID LATERAL FLOW TEST

摘要

After the introduction of serologic assays for the detection of hepatitis A and hepatitis B markers of infection, it became apparent that many hepatitis patients remained seronegative for both infections. Infections of this type were called non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANB) and occurred most frequently following a blood transfusion [1]. The agent was identified by Choo and coworkers in 1989 [2] following a series of sophisticated molecular biological experiments that led to the first isolation and cloning of an RNA virus from acute-phase sera obtained from a chimpanzee experimentally infected with NANB containing material. This new RNA virus was called the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The HCV genome is a positive sense RNA molecule of approximately 9400 nucleotides containing a 3' poly-A tail, a 5' untranslated region of 341 bases, and a long open reading frame encoding for a polyprotein of more than 3000 amino acids followed by a 3'-untranslated region of greater than 120 bases [2,3]. This genomic organization is most similar to that of other members of the flaviviridae family with three N-terminal structural proteins (C, El, E2/NS1) and four C-terminal nonstructural protein (NS2, NS3, NS4, NS5) essential for viral replication.